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Saturday, February 28, 2009

"My New Gun"

Sometime later this year, in a nifty old brownstone in the university district of a major American metropolitan area, a liberal intellectual discovers that: (a.) it isn't only "rednecks" who need firearms and (b.) that he has waited too long to obtain one -- unreasoning hoplophobia turns to unreasoning panic.(Illustration from www.bruteprop.com/)

Forwarded to me by Type-Ay with the comment:

Amazing that the N.Y. Times magazine even published this....

This tracks with my comment some time ago that we are not yet in a panic situation regarding the purchase of firearms. The true panic will begin when the liberals realize they must have a firearm and there are none left to purchase and no ammo either. That will be the real panic.

Back in late September, when my bank stocks began to tank — slowly, then all at once, as Hemingway described going broke — another wall in my life began to crack, as rumors of break-ins rattled my peaceful neighborhood in Allentown, Pa. The first indication that something was going on was the Crime Watch sign that suddenly appeared on the utility pole a block from my house.

To see what was happening, my husband and I attended a neighborhood-watch meeting in October at the nearby Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, where people suggested that crime was moving into our beautiful old neighborhood because the police were putting the squeeze on criminal activity downtown. A former city councilwoman sobbed as she told us how her home was broken into while she slept. An elderly man described how thieves ransacked his house in broad daylight. Some people were roving around different areas, stripping cars, the police liaison there told us, but evidently our stretched department could spare only three squad cars for the whole West End. We left feeling as if we’d have to batten down the hatches while the police tried to make it so uncomfortable for the drug gangs downtown that they’d move on. We signed up to be informed of future meetings and took the card of a local locksmith.

We live in a big old house with an open back porch and a three-tiered yard with trees. A year ago, I loved the fact that we were so open, that neighborhood kids and animals could play and hide here. But after that meeting, I began to see access points, places where we were vulnerable. “We have five doors,” I told my husband. “And the windows are a joke. The cat knows how to open them.”

Meanwhile, the financial news kept getting bleaker. A lawyer friend’s real estate and bankruptcy practice morphed into a plain bankruptcy practice. I’d always heard that crime increases when the economy goes down, and I found myself thinking of some of my grandparents’ stories about the Great Depression: people breaking the law out of desperation.

A friend told us to consider buying a gun to protect ourselves. The idea didn’t thrill me. I’d fired an M-16 when I was in the Army years ago, could take it apart and put it back together in the dark, and my experience with firearms, and what they’re meant to do, made me wary.

Still, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, and a few weeks later I called my friend Jimmy, a gun enthusiast, and asked him to take me along to a firing range “just to see.” He brought two handguns, each in a locked metal box, and showed me how to use them. The noise in the indoor range was frightening, even though I was wearing the same ear protectors as construction workers using jackhammers. But more unnerving were the other shooters. The man in the adjacent booth had set his target at 15 feet and was firing with a coolness and precision that chilled me. Two punk-styled boys put up their own targets, life-size blowups of a man and a woman. It was like going to get your driver’s license and taking a good look at the people you were going to share the road with.

“You might as well get used to a .38,” Jimmy said. “A .22 is lighter, but you can’t really stop anything with it. You want to make a nice big hole.”

A few weeks ago, my husband went away on business, and after two sleepless nights starting every time the old steam radiators knocked, I finally decided I wanted protection.

Jimmy took me to the Army-Navy Store on Grape Street. It was 11 o’clock on Sunday morning, and 15 normal-looking — I was relieved to see — people were leaning on the gun counter at the back of the store. Jimmy explained the differences between the Glocks, semiautomatics with magazines, and the Smith & Wesson revolvers with six bullet chambers. The clerk told us a lot of handguns were out of stock; arms sales around the country have been increasing in inverse proportion to the collapsing economy and in response to the unsubstantiated buzz that the new administration is going to tighten gun control.

“You want a revolver, to start,” Jimmy said. I pointed to a dull pink Charter Arms revolver with a two-inch barrel: the Pink Lady. It looked like a toy. Jimmy laughed. “You don’t want a pink gun.”

I watched the woman at the counter next to me test the feel of several Glocks while the young girl with her thumbed an electronic game. Then finally I picked out a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, “the gun I started with,” the clerk said. I handed him my driver’s license and filled out the paperwork. He left us to run my license number through a criminal-records system called QuickCheck. Two minutes later I was qualified and, between gun and ammo, $762 poorer. The revolver I bought has a black handle and a four-inch stainless-steel barrel. There’s nothing pink about it.

Bathsheba Monk is the author of “Now You See It . . . Stories From Cokesville, Pa.”

22 comments:

It is good that she had a friend to help her ease into the world of self / home protection. I WAS a bit surprised that anyone with any military background at all would be shy about having firearms in the house, but I suppose that a lifetime of being brainwashed by government indoctrination could have that effect on some.Excellent article.

Still, I'm glad she was able to walk into a gun store and buy a gun. It's not that way in many other places in the country. And I like her choice. My S&W 686 has a gray "handle", and I chose to buy it as soon as I met the minimum age requirement, instead of waiting until my environs reached the minimum danger requirement.

And again, with the "What you need is a revolver, little lady" nonsense.

"

Hmmm... I didn't see anything about gender being the reason for the suggestion. If anyone asks my opinion, my default recommendation for a first or only handgun would be a revolver in .357 Magnum. For this you get a sturdy one-piece platform, multiple ammo options (.38 spl, +P, .357 Magnum), fewer moving parts, and no requirement for cocking/chambering or chamber checks. There are also no worries with limp-wristing or failure to extract. The care and feeding requirements are less exact for the revolver as well. The availability of selective single-action is nice, too.

Does it seem like Obama is TRYING to get us to arm ourselves, ALL of us, and then provoke panic and eventual rebellion, or am I crazy? Every time the public calms and gun sales slow down, something happens (like leaking the Blair Holt Act, and now Holder talking AWB) to make us all panic again.

And this story is clearly targeted at non-gun libs...seems like someone WANTS all Americans to arm themselves whether they are pro-gun or not. I can't shake the feeling that there is a design to this. Collapse the economy, scare the snot out of people about crime, riots, the situation on the border, extremist "civilian militias" and talk about gun and ammo shortages and how you might not be able to buy a gun in future.... Not that all these things are very real threats, but I see the possibility of deliberate purpose behind the way this is going down. The Bamster needs a major brouhaha in order to justify disarmament, martial law, rounding up domestic terrorists, and calling in foreign troops to help.

Granted, I may have unjustly and incorrectly put the reasons for his suggestions into his mouth.

All of the reasons you pointed out are valid, and I like the S&W's. They are, indeed, a great and simple tool. I've just witnessed too much of the attitude that holds, "A woman can't effectively use a semi-auto, because they're too complex, with too many controls."

Sez you: "Does it seem like Obama is TRYING to get us to arm ourselves, ALL of us, and then provoke panic and eventual rebellion, or am I crazy? Every time the public calms and gun sales slow down, something happens (like leaking the Blair Holt Act, and now Holder talking AWB) to make us all panic again."

Bobby Rush introduced HB45 because he BELIEVES that it will "disarm white conservatives" as one ex-Panther told me last week. Now that he believes that "the Man" is on his side, he wants "the Man" to hold all the cards. If this seems ironic coming from a not-so-former Black Panther that Rush is, you have only to remember that the Panthers were first and foremost revolutionary socialists in their ideology. Rush sees the electoral sweeps of 2006 and 2008 as victory for the Gramscian dialectic. "The Man" is now socialist, ergo, the only one entitled to arms. He still believes in "Off the Pigs" only he has redefined who the "Pigs" are. The "Pigs" are now you and me and any "race traitors" among the black and brown folk who believe in individual liberty, free minds and free markets.

In the face of these very real threats, we are not "panicking" and even they know that. It is simply that being overcome with elation at being within an inch of their seizure of power by electoral means and made incautious by their desire to make it irrevocable, they announce themselves in expectation of legislative and judicial fiat. They have won the card game and expect to pick up all the chips, believing (rightly so by our own previous quietude in the face of other infringements) that we will acquiecse. They understand that we have the ability to flip over the card table and start shooting which is why they seek to disarm us. But they simply do not believe that we will because we have NEVER given them any reason to think we will. We have been TOO LAW ABIDING. That is about to change.

Then sez you: "And this story is clearly targeted at non-gun libs...seems like someone WANTS all Americans to arm themselves whether they are pro-gun or not. I can't shake the feeling that there is a design to this. Collapse the economy, scare the snot out of people about crime, riots, the situation on the border, extremist "civilian militias" and talk about gun and ammo shortages and how you might not be able to buy a gun in future.... Not that all these things are very real threats, but I see the possibility of deliberate purpose behind the way this is going down. The Bamster needs a major brouhaha in order to justify disarmament, martial law, rounding up domestic terrorists, and calling in foreign troops to help. We are being herded like cattle toward slaughter."

Anon, look at the logic of that "master plan." In order to disarm us, they want us all to arm? In ways and in places that they cannot ever hope to get all of them back? It defies common sense.

Do not expend time and effort fighting imagined chimeras and trying to map out the precise spider in the center of the one tyrannical web. There are many spiders and many webs, and they most often compete with each other for a reliable food supply and eat each other when it suits them. (Reference Hitler & Stalin for a prime example.)

Here is the secret they do not want you to know. Filter out the sheeple and the useful idiots and the toadies and we outnumber them thousands to one. We can wipe them out at the first sign of tyranny (which by the way they have already given ample evidence of) if we but realize our power to do it.

It is THEY who should fear US, not the other way around. Furthermore, they know this, and so they do. They are like the apparently fearsome Wizard of Oz -- the silly little man behind the curtain -- praying that Toto does not reveal their inadequacies and impotence.

Don't worry about the "master plan." Recover your own place in the Founders' plan, and I might add, in the Original Master's plan, and the rest falls into place. No matter what happens, our side wins, their side loses and they get to breathe the brimstone for eternity.

As the Marines say, it is not up to us to judge our enemies. That job belongs to God. It is up to us to make the introduction. You cannot do that by starting at shadows. You do it by preparing, training and, in the event, standing with a rifle in your hands and declaring that we are the armed citizenry of the United States of America and this is as far as the bastards are getting.

Does it seem like Obama is TRYING to get us to arm ourselves, ALL of us, and then provoke panic and eventual rebellion [...] seems like someone WANTS all Americans to arm themselves whether they are pro-gun or not. I can't shake the feeling that there is a design to this.

Suppose a human medical doctor wants to kill a strain of bacteria in a patient's system. He prescribes an antibiotic, a poison. When the poison is taken it is overwhelming to the bacteria, which die. The doctor insists the patient take the poison for a good number of days after the symptoms are gone, to kill every last bacteria, so that he doesn't unintentionally breed semi-resistant strains of bacteria which then multiply and are harder to kill.

WHEREAS, the continual stream of news events which scare people but do not kill them are breeding semi-resistant patriots. The longer the current non-lethal scary environment lasts, the militarily stronger the patriots will get. Maybe it could run another five years, and then there would be an RPG factory in a garage on every block that sells products over a completely encrypted anonymous marketplace on the web.

So you could imagine the new leaders are secretly libertarian masterminds who want to nurture the conditions to preserve American independence...or simply that they're incompetent and half-hearted Communists, supported by grassroots true-believer liberals who expect magic without tears, and nobody yet has the guts to initiate the slaughter Jackson (trail of tears), Lincoln (civil war), Wilson (WWI), or FDR (WWII) did.

If she lives in the west end of Allentown, Pa., she's not more than a few blocks from the Agricultural Hall at the Fair Grounds, which hosts the Forks of the Delaware gun show five times a year. It's one of the biggest in the area and would have offered a greater range of choice than any single store. I see nothing wrong with a pink revolver but since she was already familiar with the M-16, she should have given serious consideration to a carbine version from one of our outstanding manufacturers.

Remember, she purchased a Gun and ammo. You can get a .357 short nose for about $300.00. The Magnum runs from $400.00 up. Once you buy lots and lots of goody ammo, with tax, $762.00 sounds pretty reasonable. I myself own a 9mm because it holds more ammo than the 5 shot .357 and would take down an elephant. Nice choice of weapon though. And for you people who say a .22 won't take down anything, think again. A .22 Long Rifle bullet fired out of a .22 handgun will disable a thug very quickly. Might take a second shot to kill, but a Sig Sauer Mosquito .22 cal is an awesome weapon.

I took a friend, recently naturalized from India, to a gun show this weekend to purchase his first firearm. He picked a Glock 23 in 40. Nice choice. I also was asked by a group of women at my synagogue to help them find some 380 ammo. When I asked them why I was delighted to find that the six of them are working toward their concealed carry permits. Praise Adoni, and pass the ammunition!

Shalom!

My favorite translation of Shalom is: Destroy the authority that would establish chaos!

Vanderboegh and Anonymous #4 from Anonymous#2, AKA, “Tin Hat”, You accusin’ me of being a PRAG (humorous)? I agree with you wholeheartedly, but “know thy enemy.” I’m not cowering in fear, nor am I panicked. I do feel it would be a grave mistake to underestimate them as they underestimate US. However this goes down, it will not be easy. I’m speculating: “why is this in the NYT Mag?” Nothing concerning guns in the MSM is there for no reason—it is all intended to elicit a specific response, usually fear of guns and by extension, support for gun control/disarmament. Mass media is used to influence opinions, behaviors and actions using emotion. So what emotion does this article induce in the audience of NYT Mag? What reaction and behaviors will occur as a result? Finally, why would they want non-gunners to think about buying a gun? They manipulate the public, create factions and play those factions against each other. What happens when you take two factions, who have been taught to despise and distrust each other via radically opposed socio-political ideologies, and arm them while the economy of the country is collapsing and society is coming apart at the seams? I believe they are trying to cause widespread “civil unrest” AKA, civil war. They have to deteriorate conditions enough to galvanize action. That’s what the economic crash is about: producing a seismic shift in the American lifestyle to provide a window of opportunity. Disarming [our] America is a HUGE problem for them. They don’t know how many, where or who has them. Any event that would allow them to enforce a mandatory registration law ruthlessly is to their benefit. Never mind that we will not comply and the backlash will be spectacularly violent --they don't believe that to be the case. The idea that we would be willing to sacrifice as our Founders did, to defend the idea of America, of individual liberty and sacred, God-given rights...they just don't get it. They think it is empty rhetoric and false bravado. Sadly, they will find out the hard way that it is not. That is a fatal miscalculation. You're right, Mike: we HAVE been too law-abiding. I love Absolved, BTW. Aren't you supposed to be working on it ;-)? As for disarming us by arming more people…Is the typical reader of the NYT Mag likely to refuse to turn in their gun when ordered to do so? Or refuse to submit to any licensing requirements arbitrarily enacted? This is a non-threat to the powers that be. It’s like arming the French… Anyway, they need a catastrophic crisis to implement their agenda unopposed and prevent our side from garnering sympathy, support or converts from their side or foreign powers. Think about it: if we end up in armed rebellion over JBTs stomping on our rights and forcing disarmament after, say, an “act of domestic terrorism,” they can portray us as like-minded homegrown terrorists, requiring aggressive and immediate response from the government to “restore order and save the American people from further harm.” That tactic has always worked for them. It gives them the illusion of legitimacy, and approval from the general public to attack us. PR is going to be very important. If people start sympathizing with us, providing support, joining us…they’re screwed. To them, we have only small arms; they have rockets, cruise missiles, tanks, aircraft, etc., etc.: we can’t possibly fight them and win. You've argued with enough of them to know that this IS how they regard civilian rebellion versus the power of the almighty government. Obviously, bombing their own populations on their own soil wouldn’t work. But if civilians get killed, you know they’ll blame us. The media will spin it just like Waco and Ruby Ridge (I grew up 50 miles from RR). In fact, they will probably orchestrate bombings just to blame us and keep public opinion against us. This economic crash has been in the works for a long time. Remember the gov response to the crash of 1929? They are doing the same things now, only worse and faster. The long-term outcome of FDR was decades of liberal rule and ever-creeping socialism. This is designed to finish what FDR started: the utter and complete destruction of the country, the currency and individual liberty. FEAR serves them and the more, the better from their perspective. Global government is their ultimate goal. They have to take down America first. We're the last stand of freedom in the world. We won't fail simply because we can't. We fail, liberty dies, maybe forever. It’s that simple. Now, back to work. I’m dying to read the book.

I have to agree with anonymous (partly because she is my wife but also because she is not wrong very often) but I think O has motives most people don't want to think about. He is doing more damage to this country than osama could ever do and he has done it in just 6 weeks. The rest of the dems are glad to follow along for any reason and could care less what damage is done but O is doing things that no American would ever dream of doing to this country. Why? What is the fastest way to kill thousands of Americans? Give them all guns and then crash the economy. What better way to defeat you enemy than have them do it to themselves.

That was a great article and one that all women should read."A woman can't effectively use a semi-auto, because they're too complex, with too many controls."

I ran into some of that attitude when I was shopping for my first firearm. I shopped around and shall we say, fondled the hardware to see how it fit in my hand.

As a child, I had handled revolvers and I liked them just fine, but in Texas, if you want a CCW, if you qualify with a revolver, that is all you can carry. So I started looking at pistols. I was intimidated by the prospect of the larger caliber guns, hearing about how much more difficult it would be to handle, so I went with a 9mm. It was a perfect fit for my hand easy to break down and put back together. About two months later, I walked into a sweet deal on a .40. What I have discovered is that I am stronger than I thought. I go to the range to practice and there are many women at the ranges now days. Quite a few of the women have smaller caliber weapons, so if any of them ask me any questions about my pistol, I always ask if they want to try it out. All of them have been surprised at how well the .40 handles. I am stocked up on ammo for the two, so I am set, for now.Darn it! NOW I want a .45 and then maybe a long gun....As for the government wanting to push us to buy so they can take them? I'm not going to buy into that one. There is enough going on in this country to be concerned about without looking for monsters under every bush, IMHO.

What is the fastest way to kill thousands of Americans? Give them all guns and then crash the economy. What better way to defeat you enemy than have them do it to themselves.

Please tell me you aren't repeating one of the anti's gun control arguments: a gun in the hand causes reefer madness, and then the men go on rampages and viciously rape every woman on the street. The reality is that the people paying $2,500 in their first visit to a gunshop are not the demographic that riots in Los Angeles.

Melissa....GOOD FOR YOU! I've noticed the number of women at the range I go to at least double over the last couple of years. And where I used to see women only in the NRA "First Steps" classes, now I see them in the NRA "Basic Home Defense" classes, and even in the Tactical Pistol classes the range offers. My girlfriend used to be afraid of guns. Now she has her own (A S&W TRR-8 in 357 Mag), and shoots *at least* as well as I do. Nothing wrong with women taking an active self-defense stand. Far better to fight back than roll over like the politicos want us to do.

I would bet it has a lot to do with section 8 housing. We are seeing the same thing where I live. Memphis did an exhaustive study on rising crime in it's suburbs and to a tee it's followed patterns of nearby clusters of section 8 housing.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.